MEDIA CONTACT: Wendy Leopold at 847-491-4890 or w-leopold@northwestern.edu

June 1, 2004

Gibbons Receives Poetry Prize

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Reginald Gibbons -- poet, editor, fiction writer and professor of English at Northwestern University -- has been named the winner of the 2004 O.B. Hardison Jr. Poetry Prize. The prize carries a cash award of $10,000.

Given annually by the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Hardison Prize is the only major American prize honoring a poet for excellence in both poetry and teaching. It is among the top poetry prizes in the country.

In awarding the prize, poet Michael Collier, one of three prize judges, noted that "Gibbons has accomplished already more than what two or three people combined might normally accomplish." In particular, he cited Gibbons’ tenure from 1981 to 1997 as editor of TriQuarterly, the international journal of new writing, art and cultural inquiry published at Northwestern University.

Gibbons is the author of seven volumes of poems. Poet and judge Campbell McGrath called "It's Time," Gibbons latest, "a volume of historical and intellectual vision grounded in the experience and feelings of a passionate, democratic individual."

Gibbons also has won the John Masefield Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Balcones Poetry Award, the Carl Sandburg Award, and other prizes for poetry. His first and only novel, "Sweetbitter," was awarded the 1995 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and the 1995 Jesse Jones fiction award from the Texas Institute of Letters.

Gibbons will receive the Hardison Prize at a ceremony at the Folger Shakespeare Library in October. The prize is named in honor of poet O.B. Hardison Jr., who directed the Folger Shakespeare Library from 1969 through 1984.